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Lizzie Armitstead said she would “hold her head high and do her best for Great Britain” as she arrived in Brazil on Wednesday night and headed straight for her hotel near the start of the Olympic road race route in Copacabana.

Armitstead released an impassioned statement via social media on Wednesday, in which she said she had been hurt by some of the “incredibly painful” comments which had been made in the past few days, and in which she asked the “Twitter army” out there to put themselves in her shoes.

The 27 year-old also appeared to try to shift the blame for her third missed test slightly, saying that a British Cycling employee who was appointed to help make sure that she did not get a ‘third strike’ left the national governing body in May without anyone telling her.

Had he still been in place, she said, the “oversight” which occurred on June 9, and which triggered her provisional suspension by UK Anti-Doping, “could have been prevented”.

Armitstead on the podium after winning a silver medal during the 2012 OlympicsCredit:
Paula Hanna

Armitstead has been heavily criticised by some fans and fellow professionals, including former world and Olympic champion Nicole Cooke and 2014 world champion Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, who called Court of Arbitration for Sport decision “shameful”.

That prompted Armitstead’s fiancé Phil Deignan to hit back on Twitter with a jibe about an alleged affair that Ferrand-Prévot had with a married man. He later deleted his tweet.

With the situation becoming increasingly ugly, Armitstead yesterday took the decision to release a statement in which she said she wanted to reach out to the public “in my own words”.

“I hope people understand that speaking with journalists is a necessary part of my job, speaking directly to the public in a statement like this, which has not been ghost-written or moulded by somebody else is unheard of,” she wrote. “I want to take responsibility for this message. This is my life and not a game of headlines.”

Armitstead proceeded to explain some of the background to her ‘three strikes’ revealing that she had been tested 16 times so far in 2016, including after each of her six victories, and adding that she was typically on the road for 250 days a year with around 60 of those race days.

Of her ‘three strikes’ Armitstead she was “quickly and unanimously” cleared by CAS of the first, on Aug 20 last year, for not having done anything wrong. She was where she stated she would be on the morning the doping control officer came and her phone, she explained, was on silent in order not to disturb a room-mate, which was not an issue as “calling an athletes mobile phone is not a method approved by UKAD to try and locate an athlete”.

Armitstead in Team GB kit

The second strike, in October 2015, came shortly after her victory at the world road race championships in Richmond, Virginia, and was the result of a “filing failure”. UKAD did not try to test her, they simply noticed “an inconsistency between an overnight accommodation and a morning time slot”. “I made a mistake,” Armitstead wrote. “A mistake that many athletes who are honest with themselves will admit to having made.”

After the second ‘strike’, Armitstead met with UKAD and British Cycling to discuss a support plan. It was at this point that a British Cycling employee, compliance manager Simon Thornton, was appointed to help Armistead keep on top of ADAMS’, the ‘whereabouts’ system used by the World Anti-Doping Agency.

This worked well for a period until an “emergency family situation” on June 9 when UKAD tried to test her in her hour slot and she “was not where I stated I would be”.

Thornton had in fact left British Cycling three weeks earlier but Armitstead said no one had told her. “If Simon was still in place, the following oversight could have been prevented,” she said.

“It was a traumatic time and I forgot to change a box on a form,” Armitstead wrote. “I am not a robot. I am a member of a family, my commitment to them comes over and above my commitment to cycling. I am not obsessively driven to compete in cycling. I love my sport, but I would never cheat for it.”

Armitstead concluded her statement by asking people to put themselves in her shoes, arguing that she was in a fairly unique position.

She added: “I love sport and the values it represents, it hurts me to consider anybody questioning my performances. Integrity is something I strive for in every part of my life. I will hold my head high in Rio and do my best for Great Britain.

“I am sorry for causing anyone to lose faith in sport. I am an example of what hard work and dedication can achieve. I hate dopers and what they have done to sport.

“To any of the ‘Twitter army’ reading this, do yourself a favour and go for a bike ride. It’s the most beautiful thing you can do to clear your mind.”